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So I actually don't work for Codecademy, and Liz's job allows her to support her husband and son. She's not an office clerk, and her job does in fact mostly res

So I actually don't work for Codecademy, and Liz's job allows her to support her husband and son. She's not an office clerk, and her job does in fact mostly rest on her technical ability with Java and PHP. They hired her because she was the most skilled person. So ... yeah.

jiggy2011 13y ago
You don't work for Codecademy , you were just found the parent comment so compelling you had to sign up a HN account just to reply to it?
- ericgibbons1 13y ago
  @jiggy2011 I wrote the piece because I legitimately find Codecademy admirable. I've never met the founders, I don't know them in any way. It's just a service that helps people for free that I find to be fantastic. Not sure what's so hard to believe about that.
  - jiggy2011 13y ago
    I'm guessing you haven't met the founders of Venmo , Timbre or any of the other companies you have written gushing articles about either.
    - ericgibbons1 13y ago
      That's correct, though at NY Tech Day I did run into the Venmo people, and they seemed to have liked the press. Have you actually used Venmo? It's fantastic. There's a reason Braintree bought them, I use that app daily.
  - michaelochurch 13y ago
    I have met the Codecademy founders, and I find what they do to be admirable (as you do) and wish them the best. However, I don't think they (or anyone) would argue that coding instruction is sufficient to revive the possibly long-gone "American Dream". It's a small piece of the puzzle. The real problem is that while there's infinite demand for solving problems and making the world better, most people don't get jobs that provide access to that infinite demand. Those jobs only exist if you have savings to go off on your own. Otherwise, you're a subordinate supporting someone else's career, and demand for subordinate labor is going toward zero, due to technology. It's so low that if you're over 40, you're probably priced out of those kinds of jobs unless you're an executive. Most people need to work in those subordinate jobs (to get savings and credibility) before they can create their own jobs, but those subordinate jobs are now being eaten by machines, which are just much better at reliable, cheap subordination than any human. The gap between what the world needs (problem solving) and what people can get steady income to do (subordinate labor) has reached an unacceptable level, and it's now tearing the economy apart and shutting what used to be a bidirectionally reliable labor market down. Providing easy access to coding resources is an admirable step in the right direction, but this is a huge problem and it's not going to be solved by one website. Given that universities with trillions of dollars (as a set) in endowments have failed to solve it, I think that this problem is going to be around for a while.
deleted 13y ago
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swombat 13y ago
In 8 paragraphs, you repeat "Codecademy" 13 times... and once more in the sidebar. This would have made, perhaps, a decent article about the benefits of sticking to it and persevering in teaching yourself stuff, but the over-emphasis on Codecademy takes away from it.

jiggy2011 13y ago

You don't work for Codecademy , you were just found the parent comment so compelling you had to sign up a HN account just to reply to it?

ericgibbons1 13y ago
@jiggy2011 I wrote the piece because I legitimately find Codecademy admirable. I've never met the founders, I don't know them in any way. It's just a service that helps people for free that I find to be fantastic. Not sure what's so hard to believe about that.
- jiggy2011 13y ago
  I'm guessing you haven't met the founders of Venmo , Timbre or any of the other companies you have written gushing articles about either.
  - ericgibbons1 13y ago
    That's correct, though at NY Tech Day I did run into the Venmo people, and they seemed to have liked the press. Have you actually used Venmo? It's fantastic. There's a reason Braintree bought them, I use that app daily.
- michaelochurch 13y ago
  I have met the Codecademy founders, and I find what they do to be admirable (as you do) and wish them the best. However, I don't think they (or anyone) would argue that coding instruction is sufficient to revive the possibly long-gone "American Dream". It's a small piece of the puzzle. The real problem is that while there's infinite demand for solving problems and making the world better, most people don't get jobs that provide access to that infinite demand. Those jobs only exist if you have savings to go off on your own. Otherwise, you're a subordinate supporting someone else's career, and demand for subordinate labor is going toward zero, due to technology. It's so low that if you're over 40, you're probably priced out of those kinds of jobs unless you're an executive. Most people need to work in those subordinate jobs (to get savings and credibility) before they can create their own jobs, but those subordinate jobs are now being eaten by machines, which are just much better at reliable, cheap subordination than any human. The gap between what the world needs (problem solving) and what people can get steady income to do (subordinate labor) has reached an unacceptable level, and it's now tearing the economy apart and shutting what used to be a bidirectionally reliable labor market down. Providing easy access to coding resources is an admirable step in the right direction, but this is a huge problem and it's not going to be solved by one website. Given that universities with trillions of dollars (as a set) in endowments have failed to solve it, I think that this problem is going to be around for a while.

deleted 13y ago

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swombat 13y ago

In 8 paragraphs, you repeat "Codecademy" 13 times... and once more in the sidebar. This would have made, perhaps, a decent article about the benefits of sticking to it and persevering in teaching yourself stuff, but the over-emphasis on Codecademy takes away from it.